When someone dies, mourners often struggle with feelings of disappointment and need to forgive themselves and their loved one. In The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, Walls feels a sense of indignation towards her parents for her turbulent and unconventional childhood.
 
Her father is driven by his imagination and her family leads a life characterized by never letting anything tie them down. Throughout her childhood, Wall’s father Rex spent time searching for gold in order to build a glass castle for his family. Rex’s fantasy of the glass castle represented the wonderful life that he wanted to provide for his family, however throughout her life, he continuously falls short of this dream.
 
When Walls asked her father for anything, he would always ask: “have I ever let you down.” In the beginning, the answer was never, but as she grew up, she realized that he wouldn’t be able to follow through on requests that she made. Over time, she began to see her father as unreliable and was constantly disappointed and embarrassed by him.
 
When her father dies, she copes with his death is by fleeing, the way her family delt with problems when she was growing up. The disappointment she experienced from her father led her to believe that she was the only person she could depend.
 
Walls felt a sense of responsibility for her parents’ mistakes while she was growing up. Her father was a heavy drinker and she felt that she was causing him to drink, and it was her fault that he was unable to stop.
 
When her father dies, she had to accept the fact that their hardship was not her responsibility and had to learn to forgive her father for letting her down.